THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 171 September 17 - 23, 2001

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Highlights this week:

• Falwell on the Judgment of Jehovah
• Important Worm Warning
  • New Advisory: details
• The War one week later
• Protect our civil liberties: declare war
• MCSE Certifications : deadline to upgrade to W 2000
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Note that there is a special section on the Black September War. Pages of that section are listed on its own "home" page.

Life goes on and I have much to do. I have about half written a response to Jerry Falwell and others who, like Prophets of the Old Testament, believe that the Judgment of God has fallen upon the United States. What follows are random thoughts, not a coherent essay. I write this in response to a great number of requests of my views.

For the moment, understand that Falwell's statements  are not frivolous and by intent they raise serious questions. C S Lewis once said the reason we don't burn witches is that we don't believe in them: if we actually believed there were people who had made common cause with the Evil One, and who actively sought Infernal help in bringing harm to their neighbors, would we not want to hunt out these little quislings and destroy them?

The same is true for thunderings of the Old Testament variety: we no longer believe we are the Chosen People of God, and thus under special command. We no longer believe that Sodom was destroyed because its people were sodomites ( and particularly aggressive ones not satisfied with seduction ), or that Gomorrah was destroyed because it was filled with temple prostitutes (but was perhaps not much compared to the average PG-17 movie or an episode of Sex In The City). If we believed that the Judgment  of Jehovah falls on nations which do not keep His commandments, we would not be so quick to dismiss Mr. Falwell. Certainly the People of Israel in Jeremiah's time would have been well advised to take heed.

Whether those of modern times need to pay any heed to him or anyone else who speaks or claims to speak as a Prophet is not a decision lightly made. Martin Luther proclaimed the priesthood of all believers. Prior to his time it was thought that only considerable learning and study would qualify you to interpret Scripture, and Scripture itself needed to be interpreted in the light of the Traditions and Heritage of the Church which kept the Faith Once Revealed. If Luther is right then all Christians have an obligation to give some thought to Falwell's pronouncements, if only to reason their way to dismissing them. If Luther was wrong, it is sufficient to listen to the bishops.

But in the republic of These United States of America these matters are not of state importance. The First Amendment removes religion from the scope of the Congress. It does not forbid the States to have established churches, and until 1840 some of them did (that is churches whose clergy were paid by taxes) and most of them gave legal authority to moral traditions. Whether the Civil War Amendments "incorporated" the First as restrictions on the States is settled as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, but that can be set aside whenever five of the Justices decide to do so. But those are complex matters. My point is that the republic is a secular society, and cannot constitutionally base its policies on the Commandments of Jehovah as such.

We have built a secular religion of tolerance in this country. There are those who will say we have gone too far with that. There are those who think it has not gone far enough. There are those who say tolerance itself is not enough: We will not be a moral people until we accept, even embrace, what was once condemned. The problem is, how far is too far? How much is too much? We tried to determine this in the Smith Act days. We were not too successful in coming to any agreement.

The Declaration says that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the foundation stone of our republic. It is also a powerful argument for Federalism: what one community would forbid another might encourage. I have often said I would find no constitutional objection to Boston, or Massachusetts, banning my books. I would be horrified if the Congress tried to do so. I would not care to have Congress tell me I cannot (or must) display pornography at my local news stand. I encourage my city to ban it and fine those who display it. I do not find those views inconsistent, but then I grew up in a city that banned Jane Russell in The Outlaw, but across the river in West Memphis it was available to anyone old enough to carry fifteen cents and make his way across the Harahan Bridge.

What all this means isn't clear to me. I understand some of the emotions provoked by Falwell's pronouncement. The Children of Israel didn't much care for Jeremiah either. We no longer believe that Jehovah visits calamity on those who do not follow His Commandments. But I fail to understand the anger, the hatred, and particularly the cries that Falwell ought to be suppressed. He is, after all, exercising the very rights that protect those he condemns.

This is the way of republics.

Historically, empires have moved to a unity of religious profession and practices (if not belief). Diocletian thought that persecution of Christians would unify the Empire against its enemies. There have been empires with a diversity of faiths and beliefs, but the tendency is in the opposite direction, national unity at any cost. 

If these thoughts seem a bit disorganized, they are. My proclivity is to republic and mind my own business, and what my neighbors do is their business. But I also believe in consent of the governed and the only way I know to have that is local control. Also understand that I separate the power to do something from its wisdom. I would argue that my city has the RIGHT to ban my books, but I would certainly argue that it should not do so, and I would likely move to some more tolerant place if it did.

But those are the thoughts of a supporter of the republic at its midnight before the dawn of empire. The empire will begin tolerant. How it will end is not so clear.

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Notes

Mere Christianity

I know that Luther wasn't the first or only; this isn't an essay on the history of the Reformation and Counter-reformation.

By state I mean national secular authority. They may be of great importance to us as a people, in that if we as a people believed that the Judgment of God has fallen on us, we'd have some decisions to make including Constitutional Amendments;  but that isn't likely, so needn't be dealt with here.

For many years Bernie's Newsstand, located in the lot with the Ralph's (now Von's) grocery story had a back room of pornography. Bernie didn't let any kids in there, and there was no way you would know it was there if you hadn't been told. No one I know of objected. Now, across the street, on open display about about waist height, you can see any day you like magazines with illustrations and things like "Inside! Mary spreads, gives head, swallows!" As a one time soldier I am not particularly shocked by this sort of thing, but it does seem a bit intrusive into civilized life. It's unpleasant. And of course it is located across the street and about a hundred feet down from Carpenter School. I see no reason why the authorities cannot tell these people to use the arrangements Bernie had. But that is my neighborhood, and I leave you to decide what you like displayed in yours.

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And now back to your regularly scheduled curmudgeonly observations.

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WORM WARNING

More later, but apparently ANY USER OF Internet Explorer 5 including end users may be vulnerable to this. My advice is to not do web surfing with Internet Explorer until you are sure you are not vulnerable.

More when I know more.

That MAY BE IN ADDITION TO:

re: I'M HAVING TROUBLE reaching a lot of Internet sites this morning. Are you? - Glenn Reynolds, 9/18/2001 10:51:05 AM

Glen,

A new IIS (internet information services) worm is propogating this morning. One of our servers has been compromised, and we are currently investigating it. A notice just came from the NT Bug Traq mailing list less than an hour ago.

From: Russ [mailto:Russ.Cooper@RC.ON.CA] Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 9:21 AM To: NTBUGTRAQ@LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM Subject: Alert: Some sort of IIS worm seems to be propagating

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

There have been numerous reports of IIS attacks being generated by machines over a broad range of IP addresses. These "infected" machines are using a wide variety of attacks which attempt to exploit already known and patched vulnerabilities against IIS.

It appears that the attacks can come both from email and from the network.

A new worm, being called w32.nimda.amm, is being sent around. The attachment is called README.EXE and comes as a MIME-type of "audio/x-wav" together with some html parts. There appears to be no text in this message when it is displayed by Outlook when in Auto-Preview mode (always a good indication there's something not quite right with an email.)

The network attacks against IIS boxes are a wide variety of attacks. Amongst them appear to be several attacks that assume the machine is compromised by Code Red II (looking for ROOT.EXE in the /scripts and /msadc directory, as well as an attempt to use the /c and /d virtual roots to get to CMD.EXE). Further, it attempts to exploit numerous other known IIS vulnerabilities.

One thing to note is the attempt to execute TFTP.EXE to download a file called ADMIN.DLL from (presumably) some previously compromised box.

Anyone who discovers a compromised machine (a machine with ADMIN.DLL in the /scripts directory), please forward me a copy of that .dll ASAP.

Also, look for TFTP traffic (UDP69). As a safeguard, consider doing the following;

edit %systemroot/system32/drivers/etc/services.

change the line;

tftp 69/udp

to;

tftp 0/udp

thereby disabling the TFTP client. W2K has TFTP.EXE protected by Windows File Protection so can't be removed.

More information as it arises.

Cheers, Russ - Surgeon General of TruSecure Corporation/NTBugtraq Editor

My thanks to Dan Spisak and Robert Racansky for the warnings.

It is one week after the attacks. It is time to rethink: what do we want to accomplish, and what shall we do. 

I will leave that material under the heading Black September War, which is still the best name I have for our condition; but understand it may not be a war at all. We will see. But until we know what we WANT, not just now but in the long term, we are unlikely to accomplish much. Actions now will affect what we can do in the future. I continue this at length in another place.

There is also a great deal of mail on the subject, far too much to post all of it, or even comment on what I have posted. I have put that in two places, warmail and reactions; I have tried to comment on at least some of that I put in warmail.

In any event I have put plenty to think about in the war pages.

More on the worm:

More detail from an email on the incidents@securityfocus.com  <incidents@securityfocus.com> list.

This is a cumulation of the information i've found on W32.nimda thus far:

W32.nimda is NOT a code red variant, and the people who referring to it as "Code Blue" were mistaken...

The name it has been given (at least by TruSecure) is W32.nimda.a.mm. It uses several vulnerabilities in Windows NT and 2000 server's to infect a server, and also employ's email and web site mobile code to infect Windows 9x/ME/NT/2k boxes.

During the initial infection of a server, the worm does the following: - download a file named "admin.dll" via tftp from the system that is

trying to infect the target - add the guest account to the local administrators group and activates the account - makes sure c$ is shared out - copies itself to c, d, and e drives - tries to mail itself to email addresses that it discovers on the server - creates a file named readme.exe, which is used in the mobile code inserted on the web sites below - add this string to the web pages found on the server: <html><script language="JavaScript">window.open("readme.eml", null, "resizable=no,top=6000,left=6000")</script></html> - scans for and infects other vulnerable IIS servers - goes through all shared directories and puts sample.nws, sample.eml, desktop.eml, desktop.nws in each directory. these are eml messages with copies of itself (readme.exe) autoloaded by the mobile html code mentioned above. - goes through all shared directories and puts riched20.dll in each directory, which is a trogan dll version of W32.nimda that is meant to infect people running notepad/wordpad in that directory. - puts a trojan mmc.exe in the winnt directory that is a copy of itself in the above "readme.exe" format (win2000 only)

If a user views a web site that is hosted on an infected server, the following happens: - upon viewing an infected page, the mobile code extracts to readme.exe and starts in windows media player (without user intervention) - the user's machine becomes infected with W32.nimda at this point and time - the worm starts scanning for other vulnerable IIS servers - the worm emails itself to everyone on the user's address book - goes through all shared directories and puts sample.nws, sample.eml, desktop.eml, desktop.nws in each directory. these are eml messages with copies of itself (readme.exe) autoloaded by the mobile html code mentioned above. - goes through all shared directories and puts riched20.dll in each directory, which is a trogjan dll version of W32.nimda that is meant to infect people running notepad/wordpad in that directory. - puts a trojan mmc.exe in the winnt directory that is a copy of itself in the above "readme.exe" format (win2000 only)

It us unknown to me what happens (at this point in time) if a user opens an attachment that is sent from an infected site. It is possible that it could automatically infect the user's computer using the same methods mentioned above.

EVERYONE who uses internet explorer to browse the internet should probably do one of two things to stop from being automatically infected by W32.nimda (i have not tested whether or not turning off javascript fixes the problem): o) don't browse web pages until microsoft releases a patch o) turn OFF javascript

EVERYONE who uses outlook/outlook express should, at the very least, not open any attachments that they are not expecting. Turning off auto-preview might be a good idea as well.

Slashdot has an article discussing this: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/18/151203.shtml 

-- "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pacman affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills, and listening to repetitive music." ~unknown **** Jim Olsen Systems Administrator CyberJunkees ****

Jim Kershner IT Director

...

"I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place." -- Steven Wright

This was in response to my mailing to subscribers:

-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Pournelle [mailto:jerryp@earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 11:58 AM To: Jerry E. Pournelle Subject: WORM WARNING from Chaos Manor Importance: High

There is a new worm that apparently can affect all users of Internet Explorer 5.0. We do not know about other versions of IE. Apparently Opera, Netscape, and other web browsers do not have the security hole that allows this one.

Advice: don't browse the web with Internet Explorer until you have found and installed a critical update that addresses this matter. I do not know that such exists but certainly there will be one.

Be very wary just now.

More when I know more. I am told this is a serious threat.

Jerry Pournelle

I have mail from many reliable sources: there is a crisis. Turn off JavaScript. Be careful where you visit with Internet Explorer.

From another source:

Virus Alert

Be on the alert for an email borne virus with the following characteristics:

Name of attachment: README.EXE

Description: This is the preliminary information known at this time. There is a new mass-mailing worm that utilizes email to propagate itself. The threat arrives as readme.exe in an email.

In addition, the worm sends out probes to IIS servers attempting to spread by using the Unicode Web Traversal exploit similar to W32.BlueCode.Worm. Compromised servers may display a webpage prompting a visitor to download an Outlook file which contains the worm as an attachment.

Also, the worm will create an open network share allowing access to the system. The worm will also attempt to spread via open network shares.

For more information refer to: (Aliases: W32.Nimda.A@mm, W32/Nimda-A)

Sophos: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32nimdaa.html 

Symantec: http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.nimda.a@mm.html 

The reason I have not been sending out exhortations to my readers not to go about bombing Mosques and shooting people with turbans is the same reason I don't exhort you not to set the cat on fire and not to poison or drown your children and not to go to grocery stores and spit in the milk.

There are people who do this sort of thing, I suppose, but the number who read my books and come regularly to this site must be quite small, and the number who both come here and would have their actions affected by such messages is the empty set.

But just in case, please don't be beastly to your neighbors. And

Never set the cat on fire, you only will annoy it
the heat will make the beast perspire, it surely won't enjoy it,
Likewise do not ignite the dog, the snake the gerbil or the frog,
and never set the cat on fire.

Yes, I know: there are those who have been beastly to their neighbors. They are hardly likely to come here for advice.

Thanks to Rod Davenport we have details on the worm warning. See mail.

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We need a declaration of war. 

In war time we can endure restrictions on freedom. It is an extraordinary time. We put up with, even encourage, executive powers and restriction on habeas corpus because we are at war; but when the war is over, those executive powers go away. 

That's the way it should be: not the accretion of federal executive powers justified by war but continued forever.

Declare war now. Save political liberty.

WORM WARNING:

 Snort rules to detect W32.Nimda activity.

alert tcp $HOME_NET any -> $EXTERNAL_NET 80 (msg:"Nimda worm attempt"; uricontent:"readme.eml"; flags:A+;) alert tcp $EXTERNAL_NET 80 -> $HOME_NET any (msg:"Nimda worm attempt"; content:"|2e6f70656e2822726561646d652e652e656d6c|"; flags:A+;) alert tcp $EXTERNAL_NET any -> $SMTP_SERVERS 25 (msg:"Nimda worm attempt"; content:"|6e616d653d22726561646d652e65786522|"; flags:A+;) alert tcp $SMTP_SERVERS any -> $EXTERNAL_NET 25 (msg:"Nimda worm attempt"; content:"|6e616d653d22726561646d652e65786522|"; flags:A+;)

I have a Herman Miller Aeron Executive Chair, which I like a lot, but it came with a bent caster.  I have tried but I can't find any way to buy PARTS from them or any phone number to call. It's probably my fault, but does anyone know how to buy a single caster for one of their chairs?

Thomas Monaghan, thanks! I think I have one now. I sure have a savvy bunch of readers...

http://www.businessfurnitureshop.com/recycling_news.htm sells Herman Miller parts, and both new and used chairs and other equipment, and dealing with them on the phone has been simple (bit hard to find the part number I wanted, but I got someone who knew precisely what I should look for).  I'll let you know when the part arrives...

I find it interesting that the liberal establishment in California wants to give huge tuition breaks to illegal aliens -- but continue to charge Americans from other states quite high tuition. I wonder if the taxpayers of California have thought about this much. 

From Roland: "The best Nimda writeup yet." 

http://www.incidents.org/react/nimda.php 

And don't be offended...

I need a magic formula. [Have it thank to many readers.]

I have set up an old Windows 95 machine -- ye gods what a struggle! -- but I need now to be able to boot it in DOS, with everything possible in high memory so that I can run the old Q&A program. At the moment it attempts to load but never finishes loading, so I am sure I need the formula for config.sys and autoexec.bat that puts everything including the CDROM drivers into high memory. I used to use QEMM but I am a little reluctant to try that since I am not sure how to do it any more.

I also would love to play Wing Commander Privateer, which also requires that I get things into high memory including the CDROM driver.  

I would even consider doing a "boot disk" with DOS only on it if I could remember the magic formulas for himem.sys and the other memory extender stuff. Can anyone help?

HAH!!  I need to partition my drive to be smaller than 1.8GB before QA will run!!  As for the rest, thanks to all of you who sent the himem formulas. Now all I have to do is get Partition Magic out. Thanks to Mark Hartwell!

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I intend to put in most of the day writing. There is a great deal of mail, both here and in the Black September mail pages.

And there is this:

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I saw in a televised news story that a trust fund has been set up for Jeremy Glick's infant daughter, Emerson. Contributions may be sent to

Emerson Glick
 c/o Merrill Lynch
 P. O. Box 911
 Windham, N. Y., 12496-0911

If I happen to come across any other funds for the survivors of the heroes of flight 93, I'll pass them along.

Ad astra,

David K. M. Klaus

P. S.: For all the evils attributed to it, Microsoft is tied for the largest corporate cash donation to disaster relief for the victims of September 11: $10,000,000. In addition to the cash donation, Microsoft has promised another $5,000,000 in products, services, and employee time, making it the largest overall donor. Thus far over $49,000,000 in corporate donations have been pledged. (Source: New York TIMES.)

D. K. M. K.

This was a press release. I don't really have any way to evaluate how good this school is, but the announcement may be important:

Thousands of your readers may be MS Certified System Engineers (MCSEs) who are currently qualified for Windows NT 4.0. Microsoft has determined that these readers must upgrade to Windows 2000 by December 31, 2001, or lose their MCSE status. This directive has been out for almost a year now, but the majority of these workers still have not yet upgraded. To help them easily obtain the certification they need, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers has announced a unique MCSE recertification training package. Featuring a unique "MCSE Readiness Assessment Exam" and Windows 2000 upgrade courses, this is designed to give MCSEs the best possible preparation for the difficult Windows 2000 certification.

New Horizons' twist is that it offers MCSEs the choice and flexibility of taking the upgrade courses through traditional Classroom Learning, or by a live classroom eLearning option called Online LIVE or through a combination of both delivery methods. For more information, please visit www.newhorizons.com/mcseupgrade.com .

I would suspect that anyone already holding MCSE status would be able to learn all that is needed to upgrade that from books and home study courses available in bookstores or on line. On the other hand, this kind of on-line course can be useful.

But I do agree with one thing: Windows 2000 is the operating system to know just now. W 2000 Server and Professional (Work Station) work well for me, and I have no need or desire to change either to XP -- except for games.

I left out the source of the SNORT rules regarding the WORM. My thanks to BOB WALDER for those.

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The President spoke, and well. I wanted a Declaration of War. I still do. Over the course of the Cold War phase of the Seventy Years War many of our liberties were eroded away, given over to government to aid in fighting the war. Unfortunately at the end of the war they were not returned, and in general no one thought of that. As all the Founding Fathers knew, power flows to government and never comes back without a revolution: that is why they distinguished between the state of war and the state of peace.

And so should we. Measures that may be needed to defeat terrorism are themselves acts of terror when there is no war.

I would far rather see the suspension of habeas corpus for the duration of a war -- with its return the day after the war ended -- than the permanent deletion of many of its effects.

A short lecture: the writ of habeas corpus is directed to an official who holds custody (has the corpus or body) of a person who alleges the protection of the court. It demands that the jailer show cause as to why this person is detained: in other words, the presumption is that the detention is unlawful. In times of peace this is powerful protection. It can be over used. In times of war it is often an unduly prohibitive burden on the authorities.

What we do not want to see is the effect of that writ's suspension without a formal declaration of war. I do not want to see continued invasions of privacy in the name of security without some notion of when those invasions will cease. Sacrifices can be asked in the name of the war effort precisely because wars end and normalcy returns. I fear that this psuedo-war against terrorism will simply transform us all into imperial subjects without even the contemplation of a return to citizenship.

Bush made a noble speech, and there is much in it to admire. The war begins. But in the name of the Republic, in the name of God, call it a war! Declare war now.

From Mike Juergens:

This seems an important development....

"LAW and order was breaking down in Kabul yesterday as Taliban soldiers and poverty-stricken civilians carried out armed daylight robberies and looted houses left empty by people who have fled.

..

"It appears that soldiers are no longer obeying their officers."

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/21/wafg321.xml 

Michael Juergens mikejuer@home.com on 09/21/2001 at 7:13:28 AM

It is no more than one expects. Betrayal is common in Afghanistan. The Brits found that gold was highly effective: after their initial disastrous expedition, their usual method of dealing with Afghan tribesmen sheltering criminals fleeing the British Raj in India was to go into Afghanistan, devastate an area to show they were serious, then put a price in gold on the criminals head. It was usually of the formula "Alive ten gold coins; for his head, twenty." The results were uniformly satisfactory...

Roland notes on encryption backdoors

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/57/21790.html 

And I have asked several times without definitive answer about truce vs. peace in the Koran. Here is one answer.

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Working

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I spent yesterday working. Today I find that the FBI knew that suspected terrorists were taking flight school training. Apparently Janet Reno was so busy rescuing Elian that she didn't notice:

"

"I think that because Murad had been trained as a pilot it's tempting in hindsight to say that the bureau should have known," said Snell. "But I think they were missing any link that would have connected the flight schools to this kind of terrorism."

The Murad investigation showed that Murad and Yousef were planning to employ five-man teams to smuggle bombs on to 12 planes operated by United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines during a two-day period in 1995. Prosecutors for the U.S. government described the plot as "one of the most hideous crimes anyone ever conceived."

Murad confessed to authorities that part of his planned role in the terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley."

Well, well, well. One could never guess that a man convicted of trying to blow up the World Trade Center, and planning to crash a plane into Langley, might think of a target other than Langley. I mean, think of that!

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10840-2001Sep22.html 

FBI Knew Terrorists Were Using Flight Schools

By Steve Fainaru and James V. Grimaldi

Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the United States and abroad, according to interviews and court testimony.

I suppose I should be shocked but in fact I am not. Waco said it all: not competence but brutality. Incidentally, if "terrorists" had burned all those people at Waco would we have become upset?

Meanwhile, Roland reports more idiocy:

This bill will outlaw *NIX, and it will only ensure that terrorists and other undesireables know that there's a backdoor which can be tapped:

http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/09/22/026245 

Understand, the war has only just begun, and there are plenty of vulnerabilities: and the measures I have seen so far don't do much. At the least, ramp up our public health facilities. Get some trained Civil Defense people out there: there are volunteers. We have citizens. But I think they would rather turn us into subjects.

Perhaps I got up wrong this morning and I'll feel better later.

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